Sunday, July 20, 2008

TV Swamy Ramdev and his cures!

Sanal Edamaruku calls: Stop Swamy Ramdev

Swami Ramdev expects a revenue of 40 million dollar this year. Selling India’s ancient, pre-scientific notion of health care and cure – repackaged as his very special brand – is good business. Thanks to his all-out marketing, Pranayama (ancient exercise in breath control) and ayurveda are big hits with the ever-growing and prospering Indian middle class. His daily early morning show has allegedly 20 million viewers. His 500 hospitals in the country are said to register 30,000 patients per day. His new headquarters in the “holy city” of Haridwar may soon be world’s largest center for yoga and ayurveda.

S wamy Ramdev

Swami Ramdev’s breathing routine as such may be as harmless as useless. But it comes with the stunning claim to cure all kinds of illnesses including cancer and HIV/Aids. His brand of yoga, so runs his pseudo medical argument, increases the CD4 count – the number of cells attacking the HIV virus. Such baseless and irresponsible claims, luring a vast number of patients in need of medical treatment into a false sense of security, turn Swami Ramdev’s yoga ministry a disastrous venture.

“Swami Ramdev is a dangerous man”, said Sanal Edamaruku in a press statement. ’It is high time that the authorities put a stop to his activities. Claiming such absurdities is against the law. The magical remedies act of 1954 was brought in to stop people such as Baba Ramdev from promoting dangerous ideas about curing cancer and the like. But the political class is running scared of him and of the backlash that his legal prosecution might unleash."

Quoting Sanal Edamaruku, the following article appeared in The Guardian.

TV swami offers a cure for all ills

Yoga evangelist has millions in his thrall,but critics claim devotees are being duped

Randeep RameshThe Guardian, Saturday June 14 2008

At 5am beneath the Shivalik hills in northern India, Swami Ramdev sits cross-legged swaddled in saffron robes commanding the rapt attention of 500 devotees of his brand of yoga. The crowd is made up mostly of middle-class Indians, many suffering from chronic conditions for which traditional medicine has little to offer but comfort.

Each "patient" has paid 7,000 to 40,000 rupees (£90 to £500) to be among the first to spend a week at the swami's newest venture: a village of 300 bungalows offering spiritual retreat in the shadow of eucalyptus trees. Swami Ramdev's pitch is that pranayama, the ancient Indian art of breath control, can cure a bewildering array of diseases. "Asthma, arthritis, sickle-cell anaemia, kidney problems, thyroid disease, hepatitis, slipped discs and it will unblock any fallopian tubes," he tells his audience in the yoga village, who line up to have their blood tested and receive herbal remedies.

Although India has a long tradition of mystical gurus, Swami Ramdev represents a new phenomenon: the television yoga evangelist. Almost all his congregation have been drawn through his shows on India's Aastha channel. Every morning, the swami appears on television chanting prayers and explaining that ailments, physical and mental, can be treated by what looks like little more than sharp intakes of air and painful-looking body contortions. More than 20 million tune in each day in India alone. The television guru, who is also known as Baba Ramdev, is also available across the world - including Britain. He has just finished teaching on a yoga cruise from India to China, which even after attracting corporate sponsorship still charged disciples £1,000 a ticket. Last year he appeared in Westminster to give British politicians a chance to sample his yogic wisdom.

Ludy Mantri, a housewife from Mauritius, has paid 40,000 rupees and travelled 4,000 miles to see "her swami" in the Haridwar yoga village in the hope he can help her find a cure for diabetes.

"I have been on medicines every day for the last 12 years. The chanting of Om has an amazing effect and the words of Ramdev energise one through the day."

Born into a farming family in north India he retains a common touch, making rustic jokes in chaste Hindi. The guru combines this with a gentle manner and a knack for public relations. The swami sells himself as a one-person health service. He says he only charges the wealthy and that the poor get his medicines for free. He has 500 hospitals in India serving more than 30,000 a day.

It is no surprise that many sections of the Indian elite - including judges, ministers and Bollywood stars - have visited his camps. Such is his popularity that the Indian army incorporated Ramdev's techniques claiming it made for a "deadlier fighting force".

Ramdev often speaks less of spiritualism and more of the need to develop his country through yoga, portraying himself as an Indian nationalist. He attacks multinational companies for seeking to drain India of profits. He calls Coke and Pepsi good only for "toilet cleaning".

In a country where renunciation is seen as almost a divine virtue, Ramdev announces that he has long ago given up sex - because "it is not love". The adoration he inspires was seen in 2006 when Indian communists accused the guru of using human bones and animal parts in ayurvedic drugs produced by his pharmacy. His followers rioted and attacked the party headquarters. The Communist party backed down when it saw where public sympathy lay.In an interview with the Guardian, Ramdev said that the problem with communists was that they did not have "faith in spirituality and are philosophically against religion. My cures are clean but the communists have an agenda."

There is little controversy about his basic assertions. He says that following his yoga teachings for 30 minutes a day, along with a vegetarian diet of raw or lightly boiled food and no alcohol or tobacco, clears clogged arteries, reduces blood sugar and lowers blood pressure.

But the swami defended his more extravagant claims that yoga could cure terminal illnesses such as cancer. He also said he had evidence that breathing exercises could help Aids patients recover by enabling a rise in the number of cells that the HIV virus destroys.

Ramdev has an explanation for his success with cancer - that yoga oxygenates the blood which kills the tumour. "Yoga is self-healing and self-realisation. I have many cases of cancer which I can provide where patients have recovered. We have cured blood, throat, ovarian, uterine and throat cancers with yoga."

In the case of HIV, he says scientists "have not understood [it] properly". He says that "through yoga and lifestyle changes people increase their CD4 count [the cells the HIV virus attacks]. The truth seen for the first time does appear like a miracle."

Such claims have angered many doctors. Mohammed Abbas, The president of the Indian Medical Association, said that although yoga is "good exercise, it cannot be used to make ridiculous claims about curing HIV or cancer. This is false hope for ill people."

The swami says patients are tested and improvements measured by "independent" doctors. Asked whether he has run any tests to analyse treatment, he offers a ook of testimonies from disciples convinced they have been cured of cancer, cirrhosis and kidney failure.

Some have called for the swami to be prosecuted for "peddling quackery of the highest order".

"Claiming such absurdities is against the law," said Sanal Edamaruku of the Indian Rationalist Association. "The magical remedies act of 1954 was brought in to stop people such as Baba Ramdev from promoting dangerous ideas about curing cancer and the like.

"The political class is running scared of this man and the backlash that such a prosecution might unleash."

14 Comments:

You are doing a great job protecting rational thought in a country so entrenched in superstition. Superstition stops the motivation of humans to investigate. Rather than inquire into the unknown it teaches humans to settle for easy explanations.

Anyways, I plan to address some of these issues in my blog as well. May i please link my blog to yours?

rationalism is a must thesedays. however i feel sorry that people believe this baba just blindly. let's suppose if coke, pepsi or some other were making claims like that the indian govt would have taken action, but not on this baba, maybe cos he is a hindu spritual leader too. i felt gud to read this article.

People don't care about what you write or what you say. They care about what works and pranayam works like magic although it takes time. Doctors said that my father needs knee replacement, but he has been saved from the surgery after doing pranayam for 9-10 moths, 1-2 hours, morning and evening. The cartilage came back and the fluid in the knee is gone.

I can understand Yoga is not miracle but it does help in balancing mind and body.

If swami Ramdev is doing 90% good even if it coming with %10 useless, why cant we let Swami Ramdev do what he is doing, He is able to give hope to millions of people and can change hearts of people to be better. Why to stop something good.

@RajeshJust think about it, the man (baba) says that his "nasal" tricks can cure such diseases like cancer, HIV etc. with absolutely no proper scientific peer-reviewed experiments backing it up. When anyone asserts this sort of thing, one of two things might happen- either people think he has lost his marbles or that he is "divine".Now about curing hundreds, just ask any psychologist or scientist about placebo affect- people have a tendency to look at correlation and assume it means cause and effect- which can be disastrous in so many cases(religion not being least of them).other thing is absolutely no one will rely on this alone to cure advanced stage cancer etc. and if some other treatment is going, how can one assert with absolute surety about the cause of one getting better, also those that will not be cured with this will invariably die in such cases making it trivial to see that only those who survive will call it a miracle etc. and hence you have a bias.I could go on about several biases that come into picture here(eg. confirmation bias where one sees only things that are in agreement with the state of your mind or others like hind sight bias..)lastly, one must understand that just exercising and proper deep breathing cycles(which are a by product of "pranayam") can have very big results for a modern lifestyle...

@AnonymousSure, if people want to believe in a false reality of things this might be justified, but even then just think what sort of power a person who would give this hope to millions would have and as was said once "absolute power absolutely corrupts", no human in that position without a strict set of checks and balances that the scientific method provides would be able to control disrespecting the power and invariably having a self serving agenda..Also donot forget that who ever asserts something fallacious a sufficient number of times to everyone else and gets a positive feedback will invariable start believing in his own lies as truths (this is a process of rationalization in the face of something that is completely against ones way of thinking ie. a cognitive dissonance- it can also be taken for Orwellian thought as doublethink).Lastly people should be made critical of things, and should learn to think for themselves- isn't that the whole purpose of modern schooling?and things like this will only make more sheeps in our society..

@RajeshJust think about it, the man (baba) says that his "nasal" tricks can cure such diseases like cancer, HIV etc. with absolutely no proper scientific peer-reviewed experiments backing it up. When anyone asserts this sort of thing, one of two things might happen- either people think he has lost his marbles or that he is "divine".Now about curing hundreds, just ask any psychologist or scientist about placebo affect- people have a tendency to look at correlation and assume it means cause and effect- which can be disastrous in so many cases(religion not being least of them).other thing is absolutely no one will rely on this alone to cure advanced stage cancer etc. and if some other treatment is going, how can one assert with absolute surety about the cause of one getting better, also those that will not be cured with this will invariably die in such cases making it trivial to see that only those who survive will call it a miracle etc. and hence you have a bias.I could go on about several biases that come into picture here(eg. confirmation bias where one sees only things that are in agreement with the state of your mind or others like hind sight bias..)lastly, one must understand that just exercising and proper deep breathing cycles(which are a by product of "pranayam") can have very big results for a modern lifestyle...

@AnonymousSure, if people want to believe in a false reality of things this might be justified, but even then just think what sort of power a person who would give this hope to millions would have and as was said once "absolute power absolutely corrupts", no human in that position without a strict set of checks and balances that the scientific method provides would be able to control disrespecting the power and invariably having a self serving agenda..Also donot forget that who ever asserts something fallacious a sufficient number of times to everyone else and gets a positive feedback will invariable start believing in his own lies as truths (this is a process of rationalization in the face of something that is completely against ones way of thinking ie. a cognitive dissonance- it can also be taken for Orwellian thought as doublethink).Lastly people should be made critical of things, and should learn to think for themselves- isn't that the whole purpose of modern schooling?and things like this will only make more sheeps in our society..

I think IRA is just trying to gain name and fame by putting other organizations like Swami Ramdev down !! Such Organizations like IRA should not be encouraged and if they really need to do some work, they should be sent to rural areas in India and places like Rajasthan, where social evils are still existing. IRA is not required for educated class like us, because we are educated enough to distinguish between rational & irrational.

dear sir,i like ur blog, perticularly post for baba ramdev and satya sai baba.but see there is lot of difference between them, showing mirracle and asking u to do miracle with yoga.i understand that he is making money out of ayurveda, but at least making people jagrut about yoga.